MUS2026-214 - museum specimen
Oyo palm-midrib bullroarer pair
Oyo, Nigeria - West Africa
Sacred / spirit
Source term: Bullroarer
Two bullroarers left Oyo together and were bought for Oxford on the tenth of December 1926, from a dealer who did not say who had collected them. One is the expected thing: a wooden blade, 196 by 40 millimetres, on a long twisted thong of hide. The other is not wood at all. It is the midrib of a palm leaf, 226 millimetres of it, slim and pointed, with its string wound round the shaft — the first blade from Oro's country in this catalogue that was cut from a leaf rather than a tree. The museum wrote down Yoruba, and Oyo, and nothing about what either was for.
'Bullroarer' of palm mid-rib.
Pitt Rivers Museum 1926.91.21, object description
- Object
- Two bullroarers bought together. 1926.91.21 is cut from a palm-leaf midrib rather than wood — a slim pointed blade 226 x 18 mm, strung, its cord wrapped around it with terminal attachment hardware, and the first non-wooden Oro-country blade the atlas documents. Its sibling 1926.91.22 is the conventional wooden form, 196 x 40 mm, on a very long twisted-hide thong. Exact PRM photograph of .21.
- Function
- Ceremonial and religious musical instruments in the Pitt Rivers Museum classification; no specific rite, name or occasion is recorded for the pair.
- Map confidence
- medium - Oyo town anchor from the record's sole geographical field; no quarter, compound, findspot or use site is recorded, and the field collector is unknown, so the point locates the town named on the accession.
- Source location
Page references
PRM 1926.91.21 (prm-object-39582); PRM 1926.91.22